Abstract

In this article, I argue that the problematic of style, and the ways in which it is utilized within philosophical disputation, provides a useful starting-point for understanding François Laruelle's stated aim of unilateralizing philosophical materials whilst simultaneously suspending the presupposed sufficiency of philosophical language. Focusing specifically upon Laruelle's earlier work (the so-called 'Philosophy I' and 'Philosophy II' stages, according to his own periodization), I suggest that a non-philosophical unilateralization of style would necessitate thinking the various stylistic techniques of philosophy in their irreducible individuality, detaching the question of style (and of language and rhetoric more generally) from any question of its adequation to the real, and thus refusing any hierarchical distinctions between various styles.